Love it or Hate it, Steam Won't Censor Controversial Games

Valve is taking a completely neutral stance on the games offered on Steam, saying buyers should decide what they want to see.

Valve's Steam Store is opening the floodgates, and will not censor any games for controversial content.

"We've decided that the right approach is to allow everything onto the Steam Store, except for things that we decide are illegal, or straight up trolling," Valve executive Erik Johnson wrote on Wednesday.

In a blog post, Johnson said his company has been wrestling with what to do about games that contain sex and violence, as well as deal with contentious topics involving politics, racism, and gender—content that can outrage some consumers, but find an audience with others.

Last month, for example, Valve threatened to remove several anime-style adult games from Steam. And it pulled the game Active Shooter because, Valve claimed, the developer is "a troll, with a history of customer abuse, publishing copyrighted material, and user review manipulation." (The developer disagrees.)

According to Johnson, Valve's own employees can't agree on what games deserve to be on the store. But they did settle on a solution.

"Valve shouldn't be the ones deciding this. If you're a player, we shouldn't be choosing for you what content you can or can't buy. If you're a developer, we shouldn't be choosing what content you're allowed to create. Those choices should be yours to make," he wrote.

In other words: If there's a game on Steam you don't agree with, you'll just have to ignore it. To help you do so, Valve plans to implement new tools that can let buyers screen out games they'd prefer not to see.

"The Steam Store is going to contain something that you hate, and don't think should exist," Johnson added. "But you're also going to see something on the Store that you believe should be there, and some other people will hate it and want it not to exist."

Current Steam guidelines ban games that contain hate speech, pornography, or content that is "patently offensive." How much this will change wasn't made clear. But Johnson signaled that Steam is going to become the Switzerland of digital game providers and take a completely neutral stance on content, as long as it follows the law.

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"If we allow your game onto the Store, it does not mean we approve or agree with anything you're trying to say with it," he said. "If you're a developer of offensive games, this isn't us siding with you against all the people you're offending."

Response to Steam's decision is mixed. "This is the biggest non-answer I've ever heard," wrote one commenter on the blog post. "Can't wait for the garbage flooding the store that supports white supremacy which you do nothing about."

Others are calling Valve courageous for refusing to censor content, while indie developers, many of whom create less mainstream content, are praising the move.